Gift cards: Naughty or nice?

Money is no match for fond memories

December 06, 2006|By Patrick T. Reardon, Tribune staff reporter

I still remember the Christmas present Aunt Mary gave me when I was in high school more than 30 years ago -- a heavy red-wool turtleneck sweater, lovingly wrapped inside an elegant Marshall Field's gift box.

I'm sorry to say I hardly ever wore it. I don't like sweaters, and I don't like turtlenecks. But my inability to enjoy the present didn't take away from the love with which Aunt Mary chose the gift, wrapped it and presented it to me.

She wasn't only my aunt. She also was my godmother. She's gone now, but my memories of her -- and of that sweater -- remain strong.

If she'd given me a gift card, would I remember today that I'd spent it on baseball cards? Or Green Lantern comic books? Or a Big Mac?

Make no mistake. I've given gift cards, and gotten them. And used them. They represent a philosophy of gift-giving, which believes that the recipient is in the best position to know what he or she wants. Why risk giving a bad gift when I can give a "perfect" one? So, I give cash money, or I buy from a list prepared by the recipient, or I present a gift card.

But it always feels sort of flat.

According to another school of thought, giving a gift is a form of communication. It's an expression of how I feel and what I think. And, like any attempt at communicating, it's something of a risk.

My wife still wears a turquoise top with a bird motif that I bought her when we were first married, but I don't think she ever put on her wrist the clunky wood bracelet I got for her another Christmas season. Years later, I discovered it among the kids' toys.

I don't think of the bracelet, though, as a failure. It was an attempt to match my taste with hers. It didn't work; such is life. But the turquoise top did. Every time I see it on my wife, I remember buying it for her.

Recently, for my birthday, at the end of November, my son David gave me a copy of the 2004 novel "Seven Types of Ambiguity" by the Australian writer Eliot Perlman, and Tara, his girlfriend, gave me a paperback of John Irving's 1978 novel "The World According to Garp."

The Irving book is Tara's favorite book of all time. "Seven Types of Ambiguity" is something David read recently and really liked. Through these gifts, Tara and David are sharing their lives and enthusiasms with me. When I read the books, I'll be connected with them every page of the way.

If they'd given me a gift card, I would have simply followed my own interests. Instead, David and Tara chose to open two new doors for me -- doors into literary enjoyment and into themselves as well.

How much more perfect could a gift be?

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The wrap-up

In this season of giving, what makes the best gift? One that took hours to select and carefully wrap? Or the quick and no-hassle gift card? It's a debate many of us are having. Gift cards, no doubt, are catching on big-time. This holiday season gift-card sales are expected to top $24 billion. That's $6 billion more than was spent in 2005. Gift-card givers like to think they're giving convenience. But gift-giving purists fail to see anything special about a card with its value stamped so visibly on it.